SECURITY INTEGRATION
During the heat of the Cold War era, security was articulated in narrow terms of politico-military security. However, since the eighties the concept is conceived in broad terms, whereby security goes beyond the military to embrace as well the political, economic, societal and environmental dimensions.
The lifting of the Cold War swathe has removed the principal organizing force at the global level, hereby reducing the integrating dynamic and decreasing the continuity between the global system and the regional subsystem. The great powers are not any longer motivated by ideological rivalries and seem to avoid wider political engagements, unless of course their own interests are at stake. This is reinforced by the increasing resource constraints, which decreases their capability to become involved in regional conflicts. All in all, this resulted in a weak global leadership and fed into the assumption that the burden of addressing regional problems was shifted to the local states, which at the same time provided them with better opportunities to gain greater control over their regional environment.
The major 'nerve-centre' of international decision-making in the field of international peace and security is the Security Council of the United Nations (UNSC). However, the Cold War paralysed the functioning of this nerve system considerably. Now that the Cold War is over, the UNSC reasserted its role of peacemaker and peacekeeper, but seeing the ill feeling of the Cold War years it is unlikely that the UNSC will become a centralized world authority. Thus, a new division of labour between the UN and the regional arrangements needs to be worked out, which could strengthen the security role of regional agencies. The Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar stated in his 1990 report to the UN members that: "For dealing with new kinds of security challenges, regional arrangements or agencies can render assistance of great value.".
A similar note was struck in Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Agenda for Peace:
"In the past, regional arrangements often were created because of the absence of a universal system for collective security; thus their activities could on occasion work at cross-purposes with the sense of solidarity required for the effectiveness of the world Organization. But in this new era of opportunity, regional arrangements or agencies can render great service ... the Security Council has and will continue to have primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, but regional action as a matter of decentralization, delegation and cooperation with United Nations efforts could not only lighten the burden of the Council but also contribute to a deeper sense of participation, consensus and democratization in international affairs.
Regional arrangements and agencies have not in recent decades been considered in this light, even when originally designed in part for a role in maintaining or restoring peace within their regions of the world. Today a new sense exists that they have contributions to make."
Since 1998 the UN organizes high-level meeting between the UN and the regional organizations.
However, it is not only due to the end of the Cold War that the current interest in regional security integration was stimulated. Regional agreements were made more appealing to developing countries as their political maturity increased and views about the potential of regionalism to stimulate their economic development were expressed.
In sum, the overall conditions at the unit and at the systemic level for regional integration, whether economic or security, are better than during the Cold War era. Besides, as already indicated, economic; political; environmental... integration is part of security integration. Notwithstanding the broader conception of security, we should bear in mind that a relevant region for security not necessarily coincides with the one for economic integration.
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